“Immigrants and the Japanese Society”(Chuko Shinsho, 2020)

Kikuko Nagayoshi(Associate Professor of the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo)

I am truly honored to receive this prestigious award. I would like to express my gratitude to the Masayoshi Ohira Foundation, the members of the selection committee, and all those who gave me insightful comments and support in writing this book. This book started from contacts from the person in charge at Chuokoron Shinsha, who asked me to write a book to help people think about immigration in a way that is based on objective data. I would like to express gratitude to everyone at Chuokoron Shinsha who gave me the opportunity to write this book, patiently waited for the manuscript to be completed, responded to repeated revisions, and guided me through the process of completion. My book, “Immigrants and Japanese Society,” discusses the impact of immigration on society, based on the findings of domestic and international research. Therefore, I believe that this award is not for me but for many of my predecessors who have steadily built up such findings through careful analysis of statistical data and painstaking fieldwork. In my book, I have taken a multidimensional look at the impact of immigration on society, starting with the economic impact, the social impact, the impact of integration policy interventions, and the long-term impact. The various research findings presented in chapters show that the economic and social impacts of “immigration” vary depending on how governments, businesses, and communities treat immigrants. Suppose the behavior of immigrants is influenced by how the host society treat them, such as “disappearance” of technical interns who are subjected to poor working conditions. In that case, it can be said that it is the host society that has brought about these consequences. For this reason, what is referred to as the “immigration problem” is not a “problem caused by immigrants” or “problems of immigrants” but a “social problem” to which all people in the host society are parties in charge. Japan has entered a phase of natural attrition where the number of births has fallen below the number of deaths. A national debate on the acceptance and integration of immigrants is required. I will make an effort suitable for the award to research immigration.

Profile
Kikuko Nagayoshi is an Associate Professor of the Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo since 2020. She obtained her master’s degree in Human Sciences, at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University in 2007, and her Ph. D in Human Sciences at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University in 2010. Before taking up her current position, she was a part-time lecture at Otemon Gakuin University, a visiting scholar at Umea University, and an Associate Professor of the Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University. She specializes in sociology. Her research interests include integration of immigrants and public opinion toward immigrants.